People are generally oblivious to death yet it shapes their experience
Evidence
How often do you consciously think about death? Probably not much, unless you have just had a near miss with a hurtling cab or are fighting a life-threatening disease. In fact, most of us are generally oblivious to death. Yet, as we have already seen, the awareness of death has a pervasive effect on many aspects of human experience. — Sheldon Solomon, Jeff Greenberg, Tom Pyszczynski, The Worm at the Core, 613
Categorization
- XREF: connects to: Survival itself is nonsensical and demands readiness for death; Only death is an image of undistorted, not-hypostasized life — Theodor W. Adorno, Minima Moralia: Reflections from…, 88; Death is the ultimate event that is seen coming without ever being seen — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel: Plasticity,…, 91
Related
- Death’s most powerful influence operates unseen in normal life (similarity 0.88)
- Knowing how death awareness drives defenses enables more self-determined choices (similarity 0.87)
- No account of human behavior is complete without the awareness of death (similarity 0.86)
- Accepting mortality can make life more meaningful and compassionate (similarity 0.85)
- Accepting mortality reduces destructive unconscious death fears (similarity 0.85)
- Prolonged death contemplation keeps mortality thoughts conscious and suppresses defensive reactions (similarity 0.83)
- People unaware of their death fears are nonetheless governed by layered psychological defenses (similarity 0.83)
- Conscious death thoughts require delay to trigger worldview defenses (similarity 0.82)
- Mortality reminders uniquely trigger worldview defense unlike other threats (similarity 0.82)
- Death awareness would have been lethal without simultaneous cultural adaptations to deny it (similarity 0.81)
- People pursue self-destructive trends most avidly when death thoughts are unconscious (similarity 0.81)
- Death-awareness drives humans to cling to cultural worldviews and self-esteem (similarity 0.81)
- Death awareness emerges around age three with self-consciousness (similarity 0.81)
- Fear of death ultimately reduces to thwarted biological survival instinct. (similarity 0.81)
- Distal defenses minimize the occasions that proximal defenses must handle (similarity 0.80)